The mountain was fantastic. Thanks Rob for looking after me in Hobart.

Qantas / Jetstar were unfortunately very unfriendly to me. Admittedly I was 2 minutes late checking in however Hobart is a small airport and I find it hard to understand that all systems are locked out - rather think thy pulled a sly one on my - giving my seat to someone else well before check-in time closed as there was no one else around at the counters with a fresh boarding card or going through security. (That is after all of the booking difficulties due to errors on their site for which that have only provided a rehashed reply and no courtesy to actually respond. In comparision, Virgin Blue has always been a friendly and accommodating budget airline.

My brother in law had the same experience with jetstar (one-star) flying out of Sydney - missed a train and ended up 1 min late for checkin. Their claim that they can't reopen the system is a filthy lie - they wouldn't let him check in either... until two elderly ladies also arrived for the same flight and they relented. I flew with one-star back when they had no allocated seating - and haven't since. Virgin Blue or even Tiger are far better (though tiger seem to have a lot of cancelled/delayed flights).

What annoyed me was that I actually tried to book the Qantas flight - which I inevitably flew at a surcharge however frequent flyers said I could fly on it though wouldn't process the booking, and on phoning Qantas, despite it being their system mistake and misinformation, only for extra could I get a seat - otherwise, apparantly no other seats were available.

Also on the flight down, it was mean to be a qantas flight, but was actually a jetstar flight (so everything is extra and only with careful looking could I guess that the qantas flight number was actually linked to a jetstar flight number). The merge or interweave of Qantas and Jetstar is annoying and while I admit to some error being minimally late - Hobart is a very small airport. I have flown Virgin a few times and have always had good experiences, even in Jan on a flight from Melb to Syd with the family, we arrived at the airport extra early and they were cool to simply put us on the next flight - saving us hours.

I have a fantastic relationship with virginblue. They promise me good service, and are reasonable about a bike, and I allow enough time to change a flat tyre on the car and still arrive 30 minutes before their required time. The flat tyre has not happened yet, I get to the airport an hour early, and we are all happy.When I cycle, a red light is a red light. I know the rules.When I fly, I also know the rules.Pretty simple isnt it?

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